Joseph Vijay Wins Floor Test With 144 Votes

'Thalapathy' Vijay is safe, for now. The superstar actor - who upended Tamil Nadu politics by leading his Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam to victory in last month's election, breaking the DMK and AIADMK's 62-year stranglehold on the state's political landscape - was confirmed as the new chief minister after winning a dramatic trust vote.

Vijay was backed by 144 lawmakers while 22 stood against and five sat on the fence. This was after the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and its 59 MLAs walked out, and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's 47 were told to vote against.

"The whistle (the TVK's election symbol) has changed history," Vijay, who has now completed his cinema-to-politics arc, said after the result. "We will call ourselves a minority government… a government that will protect the rights of minorities."

The trust vote was required since the TVK did not have a majority after results were announced May 4. Vijay's party swept 108 of 234 seats - an incredible return for a young party in a state driven by a political binary - but 10 short of the mark.

The TVK quickly received support from the Congress - five seats - and, after four days of bargaining and suspense, secured eight more seats from the Left front, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, and the Indian Union Muslim League.

The TVK had 105 MLAs; the party lost one vote to the Speaker's chair, a second because Vijay resigned from one of the two seats he won, and a third because Sreenivasa Sethupathy R's one-vote victory from Tiruppattur has been challenged.

All 105, however, turned up and voted for Vijay.

Allies providing outside support - the Congress, the CPI, CPM, VCK, and IUML - had offered 13 seats between them, and delivered on that promise. A 14th vote came from the TTV Dhinakaran-led Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam's sole MLA.

Allied votes, therefore, gave the TVK 119 - a wafer-thin margin of victory.

The boost (perhaps not entirely unexpected) was from the AIADMK's two dozen lawmakers.

At the other end of the vote, the 17 AIADMK MLAs still in Palaniswami's camp voted against Vijay, while four from the Pattali Makkal Katchi, part of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance, and the BJP's own lone MLA, took up a neutral position.

The vote has been settled but the bigger story is the split within the AIADMK camp.

So, 24 AIADMK MLAs voted for Vijay and a 25th (also seen as pro-TVK) abstained, defying party boss Edappadi K Palaniswami's order and underlining a rift that threatens to tear one of the state's two big Dravidian giants apart.

The rift became apparent last week as the AIADMK jostled for power and relevance, for this is a party in the doldrums amid a leadership crisis and a fourth consecutive election defeat.

One faction - led by CV Shanmugam - camped out at a Puducherry resort demanding EPS, as Palaniswami is called, announce support for the TVK. Publicly the demand was shut down and the party insisted 'all is well'. EPS loyalists claimed the Puducherry camp was a precaution against 'poaching' by the TVK, which at the time was still hunting for eight seats.

Source: NDTV